I'm going to be making the Western Roman Empire faction guide soon. As it's a particularly complex one, feel free to suggest and tips/advice or strategy in the comments for the campaign, it would be really helpful! I might be live streaming tomorrow so watch out for that!
One thing I found for the Western Roman empire is that it is okay to lose province to public order at the start just get them back later and to flip to Christianity as quickly as possible
With the WRE i tend to abandon North Africa and use the troops taken from there to put down the early Rebel Romans - you can also scrounge some many troops from around Italy and elsewhere.
Ah, the Eastern Romans. Though when I play them, I call them Byzantines. For the Byzantines, I usually just try and recreate Justinian’s reconquests and the campaigns of Belisarius, while also holding off the Persians.
Finished my ERE run yesterday. EZ. Playing my HUN run today. Hardest game I have ever played. What happened is, I was sacking other horde faction and triggering a migration, at this time sassanids conquered Anatolia and hordes marched on Balkan Peninsula, heaving WRE alone to their shinenigans. And I have settled to Constantinople because A: I was low on manpower B: All my family passed away in suspicious circumstances and I could do nothing. Now me, Huns, on Thracea, Slavs on Dacia, all other factions conquered because almost all of them moved to balkans and fough with each other, (I know) A gigantuan WRE on west owning all of the Mid/West Europe, and Sassanids owning all of the Asia and Eastern Europe, Berbers on Africa, and me Huna on middle, owning 3 settlements, low on cash and manpower. My horse archers can't defeat Cataphracts and late game Roman Cav. Help.
That's so true what you said About the limitanae letting you down, and their stats making them look stronger than they really are. I had them run away in ridiculouslly easy situations, when they outnumbered the enemy by far or when they had no losses at all and the Cowards still somehow managed to get too scared and run off the Battlefield. Their Missile attack can be useful, but otherwise they are really bad.
Lugotorix I think that you are not using them properly, they are garrison troops in real life and I find them to be effective defending high ground or bridges. I have screenshots of battles in the first part of my campaign we’re 20 stack Sassanid armies would lose there entire army to an 7-8 stack force mainly of limatanei and equites. Late game they’re useless but early game for defense rather than conquest they are a good go to as they can be recruited across the empire for almost half the upkeep of comitatenses
Most effective way to use limitanei is to place them in walled frontline cities. Bolstered by some bowmen they are able to defend cities against horde factions. If the attacker fails to break the gates, 5 or 6 units of limitanei will easily beat a full stack hunnic army (which comes with only 4 units of infantry).
Pro tip: holding alt when issuing an attack order will cause the unit to attack with its secondary weapon. The secondary weapon for the imperial household bodyguard is armor piercing. It's absolutely critical to exploit this when fighting the Sassanids, who are probably the most heavily armored faction in the game. The WRE's imperial german bodyguard's secondary weapon, while more effective in a prolonged melee than the spear, is NOT armor piercing unfortunately. This means that when the Romans fight each other the ERE has the advantage.
Because they mostly use mercenaries in their lifetime, the serfdom ruined the ere after many plagues and losses in battle they can't recover their manpower easily. That's why the ere mainly used mercenaries, blame this to diocletian, they could last more than 1000 if diocletian didn't reform the roman empire.
@@peterongan9655 Not at all. The Byzantine Army were mainly Roman born during the reign of Antasius. When the Arabs took the Levant, Egypt, Carthage they lost everything that made them an Empire. But as a Greek Kingdom they were pretty powerful as Constantinople as its center.
@@alexandrostheodorou8387 Idk about the "greek kingdom" but the Byzantine empire is pretty diverse there're some emperors from Armenian, Macedonia, Syrian, and Anatolia. They hardly used greek as their main army, mostly they levied the Anatolian, and before the Huns arrived the majority of their army were from the Balkan because of their culture. Then they were massacred to almost extinction, and this is why the Slavic tribe easily colonize the Balkan. They're very hostile to the ERE making it harder to be levied by the ERE and one of them is the ferocious Bulgarian empire, they beat the sh*t out of the ERE most of the time. Their rivalry is one of the long ones, second to the Persianised empire(parthia+sassanids). When the Seljuk Turk conquered most of Anatolia ERE empire should've collapsed but because of Alexios Comnenos, they didn't yet. The fall of ERE is at 1204, the rest is just history.
It should be noted that Plumbatarii are a direct upgrade since they get the exact same stats, get better stamina, better missile damage, and something that isn't included in the description is they get more ammo compared to the Comitatenses which is good for settlement garrisons if necessary.
Bridge battles in barbarian invasion are a bit tricky, because units can swimm, they not necessarily need to go through the bridge only. And specially if you are fighting the huns and roxolani, they're gonna have a lot of archers and horse archers, which can really demolish your army in your fight. And considering you'll be fighting 5, 6 stacks of hordes one after the other, at some point your units will be too barebones to keep fighting. So yeah, huge challenge even using bridge battles as a resort (some people consider bridge battles cheesy, disonorable or even cheating or an exploit, I'm aware)
If you can survive until later in the game, Eastern Archers and Lanciarii with some cavalry and artillery support do a LOT of work, though. In the terms of having hundreds of kills and only a dozen or so losses.
Comitatenses First Cohort ATK 10 - MISSILE 11 *_DEFENSE 25_* CHARGE 2 Me: Wow. These guys might just unite the Roman Empire in no time! Barbarian Invasion: _Barbarian Factions have over 90% Units with Armor Piercing_ Me: *_Rome definitely burned down in one day._*
Basically, the nice things about limitanei are that they’re cheap and make good sponges for enemy horse archers. As the ERE, you have heavy archers which counter horse archers and the limitanei boys are bait.
"Strong mixture of troops, few weak units. I would argue again that there actually are a few weak units..." Indeed, a few weak units. Just like it says.
Plumbatarii are the same as comit but got better missiles with MUCH more ammo! this is SUPER useful as they are deadly! also, limitaeni and lanciarri have a lot of javelins unlike the regular 2 pila of the legionaries.
That was really fast hehe, wasnt expecting this video that soon, well done man, good video, didnt play rome for sooo long,played only on cd but now i think im gonna get it on steam, nostalgia hits hard
Comitatenses and the late empire army, where the cohort system was removed due to the fact it was too expensive, were armed with spathas instead of gladii due to the fact the gladius - scutum combo being used for over 500 years, even before the Marian reforms, was removed for reasons I am not sure why.
@@thessop9439 cavalry yes, because you had more space, but the infantry usually found it moderately cumbersome, and the gladius was already capable of a variety of things, and more.
What is there not to understand? Almost every single historian and weapons enthusiast explains why. A large square shield and short sword combo is great when you are fighting in formation with very disciplined soldiers that knows the strength and the weaknesses of short sword / big shield combo. It is great against fighting against spearmen, it is great against pushing enemies on one side, it is great against tightly packed battlegrounds. Spatha and Oval shield combo is great when fighting against cavalry, as the swords are longer. It's great when fighting off formation as you can swing the long(er) sword in various ways. It is told to be much easier to teach compared to the gladius. You can give a random untrained man an arming sword or a spear and he will use it good enough against an angry mob. You give a large shield and short sword to a guy and he will be trembled under the feet of the horde. Edit: added (er)
because they are better. What do you mean the infantry found it moderately cumbersome? Every fighting men in history abandoned short swords for longer ones whenever it is economically and technologically possible.
I always convert all the cities to Christianity on the first turn. I make Antioch and Constantinople my advanced units cities and try to get money from the others investing in ports, trade, and keeping them happy when I need to. Yeah, I plug up the bridges and then shift around shadowing hordes so I can concentrte where they are going to cross. If I can get onagers quickly, I work at putting 6 by each bridge with 3-4 Eastern archers flanking the bridge, and then I rain firey death down on the horde as it masses to push the bridge.I plug up the bridge with good melee and keep the general in the mix. If you get a horde to early though... bloody mess, they still push through your guys, especially those thrice-be-damned Limitanei
I think the most disappointing BI unit by far are the British Legionaries. They... They don't live up to their name, and certainly are not a match for the normal Comitatenses. They're simply average, which isn't great when, barring mercs, they're the Romano British' best infantry.
I find that converting to christianity as ERE isn't too bad... most settelments already have a lot of christians, also I try to send the pagan generals out on the frontier so that they don't affect my settlements.... I think this is by far the easy romans compared to WRE
Slavs is honestly the faction I know least about because it isn't playable without serious alterations to files, right? But I would certainly consider doing a guide on it once I've finished the more obvious factions. Doing a guide on the slavs would require me to do quite a lot of research though :)
Barely able to see this video, great to see u uploading again honesty u have a lot of potential to grow your channel to rival anyone out there. Also a barbarian invasion camping sounds pretty cool
Playing my Hun campaign today, I was never able to use Plumbatarii effectively before. But AI cleans the floor with me. Their armor stops my arrows and their range is so large that every hit melts half unit of lightly armored Hun Cavalry.
The Byzantine Empire still was the Western Roman Empire. The word Byzantine was derived from the old Greek colony Byzanton(Constantinople). It was then used by scholars and historians in the 19th century to differentiate between the (western)Romans of antiquity and the (western)Romans during the medieval era. People living in the Western Roman Empire did not call themselves Byzantines nor Western Romans, but simply Romans, even up to the early 20th century.
The eastern romans were called Byzantines throughout the medieval era in recent years.They called themselves Romans.The city was called Byzantium in ancient times but Constantine the first called it Constantinople (meaning the city of Constantine).The eastern part was influenced alot by Greek culture
@@jhmmgf4236 Yes, they called themselves the Romans, but did it in Greek (at least after the age of Justinian as Greek replaced Latin), which is a bit ironic, but the name stuck around to be applied to medieval Greeks as well as subsequent, Islamic states in the area, such as the Sultanate of Rum and the Rumeli region of the Ottoman Empire.
If you interested in this topic and haven’t heard it yet, I’d highly recommend the ongoing podcast series “The History of Byzantium”, which covers the history of the Eastern Roman/Byzantine Empire from its beginning and has currently reached roughly the time of the First Crusade.
Those bridges alone make playing as the East much easier than the West. The defensive position is so strong that I’d honestly just never expand north and just focus on east and west
A point to add to about Scholae Palatinae is that they are worse than Sarmation Auxilia. Sarmations have 10 attack and 22 defence. Scholae have 8 attack and 21 defence. Both have good morale. It took me way to long to realise and when I did it completely confused me.
Man I'm not even playing on hard but the Huns just destroy me. They just do not care and sit on the other side shooting me with their horse archers until they run out of arrows, then their swimmers cross the water forcing me to spread my forces and even though I still win this once this is all over they just come with another army, and another and another. I can barely grind down 3 armies before they cross the bridges and just waltz into my lands. And even though all regions are stable by this point Im losing money hard and fast so rebuilding expensive armies is almost impossible. On a side note, what bullshit that both early game spear units don't have bonus against cavalry as if fighting armoured horse archers wasn't bad enough.
They used an sword called Spata it was long, around the size of the Hospitaliers' one handed sword. And nice obalated Scutum and heavy mail armor and a helmet similar to the Gallic Legionary helmet, model, just a bit more uniform and with a longer protection for the back neck. Pretty much heavy armored Romans-Greeks-Numidians (remember Numidians lived in the Exharcates (Bizantine provinces) of Africa Prima and Africa Secunda. Yes hard to lose all of that territory.
ERE generals are good enough, and you start with enough pagan ones, that I like to consolidate all of my starting pagan generals into a mini doom stack and use it to attack the Sassanians.
Aegyptus is pronounced "Aye-gup-tis", at least in the Latin pronunciation I learned in HS. Not trying to be a grammar nazi, but I just like that pronunciation and think it is kind of interesting.
I don't know if it's just me, but I wouldn't put the Cataphracts and Ciblinarii so high up. Yeah, they are very durable and very hard to kill, but their attack power is kinda disappointing. It seems they're meant to be shock troopers and not for killing enemies quickly in a melee, it'll take them forever to finish a unit off if the initial charge doesn't break them. I think the Eastern Roman empire's cavalry is kinda lacking, except the Palatinae and the generals, but all their main melee infantry units have pila to throw, and they have one hell of an archer~
Old Man Yells at Limitanei for 33 Minutes But I'm migrating over from a (failed, obviously) Western Empire save as we speak. I will heed your advice, Limitanei distrespecter.
The Warhammer games really brought back the wonder of the original Rome Total War, where every faction is seriously different. I don't like the microtransaction h*** you have to slog through to unlock all the factions, but at least you are getting a game with a lot of replay value. Sadly, I didn't find much of that in Empire, Rome II, Shogun II, or most of the other historical games after Medieval II. Faction variety is key to a Total War game, IMHO, and R:TW has a ton of it. But so do the Warhammer TW games.
My play is usually force convert to Christianity, let them revolt if they then want to, then consolidate, take them back, sack them for money and they’ll then be happy Christian settlements
I conquered the whole map with them.I had to spent a ton of money to make sure the population had all the best churches and arenas available .I felt that I could never really suck the money off of em through taxes and always have to apply low tax paying on the big cities.
So say I select a Pagan faction heir. I would have to wait for him to take power but what strategic adavntages do the religions have when selecting which to convert the empire to?
Caleb Evans Christianity gives huge public order boosts and allows you to build another religious building, the Hermitage. It also allows you to recruit Orthodox Priests into your army. Paganism gives boosts to settlements/units, this includes experience boosts, recruitment of bezerkers(exclusive to the Alemanni and Lombardi), missile attack boost for the Saxons, etc. They have poor public order boosts, and if the state religion differs from a city’s religion, it gets negative debuffs to public order. In my opinion, if you aren’t playing as the Western Romans, Eastern Romans, Goths, or Franks, don’t bother with Christianity, for those are the only factions that can recruit Christian Priests. With the WRE, it should be a priority to convert your cities to Christianity, since you’re going to need that public order bonus if you want to keep the empire together. As the Franks, however, even though you can recruit Christian priests by converting, your main priority as them is to handle your squalor and the Alemanni down south. I hope this helps you in your next campaign.
The SPQR is a really interesting faction, it's like your standard Roman faction but with some very odd quirks (since they're supposed to be unplayable, and are ironically more broken than the Rebels) -- They, like Rebels, cannot have their settlements revolt. I assume this is so that the SPQR can't lose Rome before the civil war starts -- The SPQR can't build any temples. While you don't really need happiness or public order, it does kind of suck that you can't build temples to gain population growth or military bonuses -- Trying to click the "Senate" tab in the factions menu crashes the game :P -- For some reason, if the player takes control of the SPQR, the Italian peninsula enters "Battle Royale" mode. Every game I've played, after even just a handful of turns, the civil war will suddenly trigger incredibly early, most often by a Roman faction attempting to attack you. I don't know why this happens, and this is obviously impossible when playing as other Romans -- You have easily the best starting army in the entire game, and when Battle Royale mode inevitably breaks out, you will already have experience 3 Principes and Triarii while the other Romans will still be using Hastati. My strategy is usually this: 1) Secure Sardinia and then move to Sicily. You have an incredibly strong starting army, the Carthagineans will absolutely be no match. You will also want these areas for when the civil war fires; just in case Rome should fall, you'll still be alive and relatively safe 2) From Sicily and Rome, push straight to the Scipii and wipe them out early as soon as the civil war starts. They're not the strongest, so it's best to get them out of the way as soon as possible 3) Position some troops on the defense at the bridge on the Tiber river near Rome to hold off the Julii while you send the rest of your armies to remove the Brutii from Southern Italy. The vast majority of their army will be in Greece, so they will be very easy to push out. There is a good chance they will still be alive in Greece though, but the AI almost never launches naval invasions, so you'll be safe. 4) After surviving the Julii assaults, launch a counter attack. They probably will not expand into Gaul while they're at war with you, so they'll be small. 5) You should now have dominance of the Italian peninsula, and you can basically play like a normal Roman faction. Be sure to never destroy any religious buildings you come across, since you can't build your own
I can't believe it, this game is very inaccurate, dromedaries reach speeds of 65km/h and horses of 77km/h It should be 4 point of charge for Dromedary and 5 points for horsemen/equites.
I'm going to be making the Western Roman Empire faction guide soon. As it's a particularly complex one, feel free to suggest and tips/advice or strategy in the comments for the campaign, it would be really helpful!
I might be live streaming tomorrow so watch out for that!
One thing I found for the Western Roman empire is that it is okay to lose province to public order at the start just get them back later and to flip to Christianity as quickly as possible
MANY A TRUE NERD WRE CAMPAIGN EPISODE 1 PROVIDES GREAT ADVICE
With the WRE i tend to abandon North Africa and use the troops taken from there to put down the early Rebel Romans - you can also scrounge some many troops from around Italy and elsewhere.
Ah, the Eastern Romans. Though when I play them, I call them Byzantines. For the Byzantines, I usually just try and recreate Justinian’s reconquests and the campaigns of Belisarius, while also holding off the Persians.
It's pretty amazing that these guys can field orthodox priests 700 years before the great schism.
Barbarian invasion, the campaign expansion for men
"Know this, all roads lead to Nilfgaard"
Finished my ERE run yesterday. EZ.
Playing my HUN run today. Hardest game I have ever played.
What happened is, I was sacking other horde faction and triggering a migration, at this time sassanids conquered Anatolia and hordes marched on Balkan Peninsula, heaving WRE alone to their shinenigans. And I have settled to Constantinople because
A: I was low on manpower
B: All my family passed away in suspicious circumstances and I could do nothing.
Now me, Huns, on Thracea, Slavs on Dacia, all other factions conquered because almost all of them moved to balkans and fough with each other, (I know) A gigantuan WRE on west owning all of the Mid/West Europe, and Sassanids owning all of the Asia and Eastern Europe, Berbers on Africa,
and me Huna on middle, owning 3 settlements, low on cash and manpower.
My horse archers can't defeat Cataphracts and late game Roman Cav.
Help.
@@hannibalburgers477 you are meant to seek out the enemy armies, then take three cities.
That's so true what you said About the limitanae letting you down, and their stats making them look stronger than they really are. I had them run away in ridiculouslly easy situations, when they outnumbered the enemy by far or when they had no losses at all and the Cowards still somehow managed to get too scared and run off the Battlefield. Their Missile attack can be useful, but otherwise they are really bad.
Allister Jeffery yep haha I've suffered many similar experiences with them as well
Lugotorix I think that you are not using them properly, they are garrison troops in real life and I find them to be effective defending high ground or bridges. I have screenshots of battles in the first part of my campaign we’re 20 stack Sassanid armies would lose there entire army to an 7-8 stack force mainly of limatanei and equites. Late game they’re useless but early game for defense rather than conquest they are a good go to as they can be recruited across the empire for almost half the upkeep of comitatenses
(Hard difficulty)
I think that is the reason why the romans have the priest units to give the easily scared off cheap units a morale boost
Most effective way to use limitanei is to place them in walled frontline cities. Bolstered by some bowmen they are able to defend cities against horde factions. If the attacker fails to break the gates, 5 or 6 units of limitanei will easily beat a full stack hunnic army (which comes with only 4 units of infantry).
The first part of this video could have just as well been this guy waving his fist at the sky and yelling "Limitaaaaaneeeiiiii" for 15 minutes
Pro tip: holding alt when issuing an attack order will cause the unit to attack with its secondary weapon. The secondary weapon for the imperial household bodyguard is armor piercing. It's absolutely critical to exploit this when fighting the Sassanids, who are probably the most heavily armored faction in the game. The WRE's imperial german bodyguard's secondary weapon, while more effective in a prolonged melee than the spear, is NOT armor piercing unfortunately. This means that when the Romans fight each other the ERE has the advantage.
But the western empire has the Palatine Guard.
And the east has cataphracts
A bit unfair agianst the AI, they never do that.
Bridges are the most op thing in the old total war games
ATK Productions haha yes that's very true
If I rush to get archers and onagers to join my field troops on a bridge, I've destroyed so many barbarian civilizations on that bridge.
The Virgin Attila Total War vs the Chad Rome Total War: Barbarian Invasion
I always found it peculiar how weak the ere units were considering they continue on for another 1000 years
they go through several roster rework until they finally go the way of the dodo.
The army that stood in Byzantium even a couple centuries later was much different.
Because they mostly use mercenaries in their lifetime, the serfdom ruined the ere after many plagues and losses in battle they can't recover their manpower easily.
That's why the ere mainly used mercenaries, blame this to diocletian, they could last more than 1000 if diocletian didn't reform the roman empire.
@@peterongan9655 Not at all. The Byzantine Army were mainly Roman born during the reign of Antasius. When the Arabs took the Levant, Egypt, Carthage they lost everything that made them an Empire. But as a Greek Kingdom they were pretty powerful as Constantinople as its center.
@@alexandrostheodorou8387 Idk about the "greek kingdom" but the Byzantine empire is pretty diverse there're some emperors from Armenian, Macedonia, Syrian, and Anatolia. They hardly used greek as their main army, mostly they levied the Anatolian, and before the Huns arrived the majority of their army were from the Balkan because of their culture. Then they were massacred to almost extinction, and this is why the Slavic tribe easily colonize the Balkan.
They're very hostile to the ERE making it harder to be levied by the ERE and one of them is the ferocious Bulgarian empire, they beat the sh*t out of the ERE most of the time. Their rivalry is one of the long ones, second to the Persianised empire(parthia+sassanids). When the Seljuk Turk conquered most of Anatolia ERE empire should've collapsed but because of Alexios Comnenos, they didn't yet. The fall of ERE is at 1204, the rest is just history.
Finally new RTW Faction guide
BTW You haven't done a RTW Faction guide on the Rebels and Senate.
*REBEL DIPLOMAT WOULD LIKE TO KNOW YOUR LOCATION
*
It should be noted that Plumbatarii are a direct upgrade since they get the exact same stats, get better stamina, better missile damage, and something that isn't included in the description is they get more ammo compared to the Comitatenses which is good for settlement garrisons if necessary.
and they have more range
Bridge battles in barbarian invasion are a bit tricky, because units can swimm, they not necessarily need to go through the bridge only. And specially if you are fighting the huns and roxolani, they're gonna have a lot of archers and horse archers, which can really demolish your army in your fight. And considering you'll be fighting 5, 6 stacks of hordes one after the other, at some point your units will be too barebones to keep fighting. So yeah, huge challenge even using bridge battles as a resort (some people consider bridge battles cheesy, disonorable or even cheating or an exploit, I'm aware)
If you can survive until later in the game, Eastern Archers and Lanciarii with some cavalry and artillery support do a LOT of work, though. In the terms of having hundreds of kills and only a dozen or so losses.
I love plumbatarii, so devastating if allowed to hurl their darts.
Comitatenses First Cohort
ATK 10 - MISSILE 11
*_DEFENSE 25_*
CHARGE 2
Me: Wow. These guys might just unite the Roman Empire in no time!
Barbarian Invasion: _Barbarian Factions have over 90% Units with Armor Piercing_
Me: *_Rome definitely burned down in one day._*
If men forgot how to use axes, Rome stands.
When even a toddler can use axes, Rome cannot stand.
Cool content. Brings old feelings back.
Basically, the nice things about limitanei are that they’re cheap and make good sponges for enemy horse archers. As the ERE, you have heavy archers which counter horse archers and the limitanei boys are bait.
"Strong mixture of troops, few weak units. I would argue again that there actually are a few weak units..."
Indeed, a few weak units. Just like it says.
ahh yeah I must've accidentally misspoke. I meant to say that I agreed with the game's description
Plumbatarii are the same as comit but got better missiles with MUCH more ammo! this is SUPER useful as they are deadly!
also, limitaeni and lanciarri have a lot of javelins unlike the regular 2 pila of the legionaries.
That was really fast hehe, wasnt expecting this video that soon, well done man, good video, didnt play rome for sooo long,played only on cd but now i think im gonna get it on steam, nostalgia hits hard
Rafa Calero glad you enjoyed the video! Yeah I'd definitely recommend getting it on steam
Comitatenses and the late empire army, where the cohort system was removed due to the fact it was too expensive, were armed with spathas instead of gladii due to the fact the gladius - scutum combo being used for over 500 years, even before the Marian reforms, was removed for reasons I am not sure why.
Spathas were superior in every way
@@thessop9439 cavalry yes, because you had more space, but the infantry usually found it moderately cumbersome, and the gladius was already capable of a variety of things, and more.
@@lostvayne3977 In a melee, spathas are superior due to its lenght.
Just consider how the longsword became so popular later
What is there not to understand? Almost every single historian and weapons enthusiast explains why. A large square shield and short sword combo is great when you are fighting in formation with very disciplined soldiers that knows the strength and the weaknesses of short sword / big shield combo. It is great against fighting against spearmen, it is great against pushing enemies on one side, it is great against tightly packed battlegrounds.
Spatha and Oval shield combo is great when fighting against cavalry, as the swords are longer. It's great when fighting off formation as you can swing the long(er) sword in various ways. It is told to be much easier to teach compared to the gladius.
You can give a random untrained man an arming sword or a spear and he will use it good enough against an angry mob. You give a large shield and short sword to a guy and he will be trembled under the feet of the horde.
Edit: added (er)
because they are better.
What do you mean the infantry found it moderately cumbersome?
Every fighting men in history abandoned short swords for longer ones whenever it is economically and technologically possible.
I always convert all the cities to Christianity on the first turn. I make Antioch and Constantinople my advanced units cities and try to get money from the others investing in ports, trade, and keeping them happy when I need to. Yeah, I plug up the bridges and then shift around shadowing hordes so I can concentrte where they are going to cross. If I can get onagers quickly, I work at putting 6 by each bridge with 3-4 Eastern archers flanking the bridge, and then I rain firey death down on the horde as it masses to push the bridge.I plug up the bridge with good melee and keep the general in the mix. If you get a horde to early though... bloody mess, they still push through your guys, especially those thrice-be-damned Limitanei
I do it for religious reasons. I’m a devout Christian
@@marcuswoods2006 I also definitely enjoy crushing those Zoroastrians and Pagans.
Being Pagan, I convert totally to Paganism!.
@@Anaris10 in game, go as you like. In life, paganism is a silly game
@@naponroy paganism is a completely fine religion.
I think the most disappointing BI unit by far are the British Legionaries. They...
They don't live up to their name, and certainly are not a match for the normal Comitatenses.
They're simply average, which isn't great when, barring mercs, they're the Romano British' best infantry.
they are a cav faction
I find that converting to christianity as ERE isn't too bad... most settelments already have a lot of christians, also I try to send the pagan generals out on the frontier so that they don't affect my settlements.... I think this is by far the easy romans compared to WRE
Ensure the religion of your heir always matches your faction!
Please do Slavs next!
I'm so sorry you won't be doing campaigns anymore. But at least we got your tips and tricks on factions!
Slavs is honestly the faction I know least about because it isn't playable without serious alterations to files, right? But I would certainly consider doing a guide on it once I've finished the more obvious factions. Doing a guide on the slavs would require me to do quite a lot of research though :)
@@lugotorix6173
Thank You!
I've been looking towards Barbarian Invasion. So viewing your faction guides will help me out a lot.
Barely able to see this video, great to see u uploading again honesty u have a lot of potential to grow your channel to rival anyone out there. Also a barbarian invasion camping sounds pretty cool
Thanks for the support man. what do you mean by you can't see the video?
Plumbatarii can devastate the Sassanid general.A unit that is unstoppable.
Playing my Hun campaign today, I was never able to use Plumbatarii effectively before.
But AI cleans the floor with me. Their armor stops my arrows and their range is so large that every hit melts half unit of lightly armored Hun Cavalry.
Limitanei, hellenization of the Latin word Limita, a man who guards the border Limitanos-Λιμιτανός plural Λιμιτανοί or Λιμιταναίοι-Limitanei.
The Byzantine Empire still was the Western Roman Empire. The word Byzantine was derived from the old Greek colony Byzanton(Constantinople). It was then used by scholars and historians in the 19th century to differentiate between the (western)Romans of antiquity and the (western)Romans during the medieval era. People living in the Western Roman Empire did not call themselves Byzantines nor Western Romans, but simply Romans, even up to the early 20th century.
Nathan Williams ahhh fair enough, this period of history isn't my strongest haha. Thanks for letting me know!
I think you meant the Eastern Romans were the Byzantines, the Western romans died out long before the eastern ones.
The eastern romans were called Byzantines throughout the medieval era in recent years.They called themselves Romans.The city was called Byzantium in ancient times but Constantine the first called it Constantinople (meaning the city of Constantine).The eastern part was influenced alot by Greek culture
@@jhmmgf4236 Yes, they called themselves the Romans, but did it in Greek (at least after the age of Justinian as Greek replaced Latin), which is a bit ironic, but the name stuck around to be applied to medieval Greeks as well as subsequent, Islamic states in the area, such as the Sultanate of Rum and the Rumeli region of the Ottoman Empire.
If you interested in this topic and haven’t heard it yet, I’d highly recommend the ongoing podcast series “The History of Byzantium”, which covers the history of the Eastern Roman/Byzantine Empire from its beginning and has currently reached roughly the time of the First Crusade.
Those bridges alone make playing as the East much easier than the West. The defensive position is so strong that I’d honestly just never expand north and just focus on east and west
Pretty good guide I’ll try it
A point to add to about Scholae Palatinae is that they are worse than Sarmation Auxilia.
Sarmations have 10 attack and 22 defence.
Scholae have 8 attack and 21 defence.
Both have good morale.
It took me way to long to realise and when I did it completely confused me.
Yeah idk why anyone would recruit Scholae Palantinae, not only are they worse, but they are more expensive than Sarmatians aswell.
I know, it’s a literal scam. And these were the replacements for the Praetorian Guard.
Man I'm not even playing on hard but the Huns just destroy me. They just do not care and sit on the other side shooting me with their horse archers until they run out of arrows, then their swimmers cross the water forcing me to spread my forces and even though I still win this once this is all over they just come with another army, and another and another. I can barely grind down 3 armies before they cross the bridges and just waltz into my lands. And even though all regions are stable by this point Im losing money hard and fast so rebuilding expensive armies is almost impossible.
On a side note, what bullshit that both early game spear units don't have bonus against cavalry as if fighting armoured horse archers wasn't bad enough.
They do have a bonus against cavalry. It just does not show up in the unit description for some reason. Shows up in the game files.
You should build a full army of elite ERE calavlry, 10 generals + 10 cataphracts can destroy the entire Hun horde
@@arnaudh2082It's how ERE fought the Huns IRL
They used an sword called Spata it was long, around the size of the Hospitaliers' one handed sword. And nice obalated Scutum and heavy mail armor and a helmet similar to the Gallic Legionary helmet, model, just a bit more uniform and with a longer protection for the back neck. Pretty much heavy armored Romans-Greeks-Numidians (remember Numidians lived in the Exharcates (Bizantine provinces) of Africa Prima and Africa Secunda.
Yes hard to lose all of that territory.
Spatha*
ERE generals are good enough, and you start with enough pagan ones, that I like to consolidate all of my starting pagan generals into a mini doom stack and use it to attack the Sassanians.
>game says there's a few weak units
>lugo reads that aloud
>"But I would argue there are a few weak units."
Aegyptus is pronounced "Aye-gup-tis", at least in the Latin pronunciation I learned in HS. Not trying to be a grammar nazi, but I just like that pronunciation and think it is kind of interesting.
Wth? Wdym Ayeguptis? It's pronounced as "æ geep toos" in latin. Scorpio pronounces it like "Æ geep toos"
I don't know if it's just me, but I wouldn't put the Cataphracts and Ciblinarii so high up. Yeah, they are very durable and very hard to kill, but their attack power is kinda disappointing. It seems they're meant to be shock troopers and not for killing enemies quickly in a melee, it'll take them forever to finish a unit off if the initial charge doesn't break them.
I think the Eastern Roman empire's cavalry is kinda lacking, except the Palatinae and the generals, but all their main melee infantry units have pila to throw, and they have one hell of an archer~
Old Man Yells at Limitanei for 33 Minutes
But I'm migrating over from a (failed, obviously) Western Empire save as we speak. I will heed your advice, Limitanei distrespecter.
It's funny how R:TW is still better than any other Total War game. Only Medieval II got close. (and maybe Empire?)
All of them are pretty good, apart from Rome II(imo). Shogun 2 with a couple of tweak mods is awesome by the way.
@@raized943 Rome 2 crushed my soul I started playing it in 2018 and was still crushed my DLC.
The Warhammer games really brought back the wonder of the original Rome Total War, where every faction is seriously different. I don't like the microtransaction h*** you have to slog through to unlock all the factions, but at least you are getting a game with a lot of replay value. Sadly, I didn't find much of that in Empire, Rome II, Shogun II, or most of the other historical games after Medieval II. Faction variety is key to a Total War game, IMHO, and R:TW has a ton of it. But so do the Warhammer TW games.
@@richardkenan2891 Ah yes, that game where I walk through corrupted lands and take attrition while the AI doesn't. Awesome mechanics.
My play is usually force convert to Christianity, let them revolt if they then want to, then consolidate, take them back, sack them for money and they’ll then be happy Christian settlements
Thats the small issue with the roman units in this game. They simply dont hit hard enough. Especially those infantry
Is there a way to run R:TW - BI under Win10? I miss playing this game. Especially now after having watched these guides.
Wolfogre buying the game on steam is what I would recommend :)
U can download it on your phone now xD
don't even use peasants for garrisons, they only give 50% garrison strength compared to troops in BI. Just use limitanei
I conquered the whole map with them.I had to spent a ton of money to make sure the population had all the best churches and arenas available .I felt that I could never really suck the money off of em through taxes and always have to apply low tax paying on the big cities.
Woohoo!
So say I select a Pagan faction heir. I would have to wait for him to take power but what strategic adavntages do the religions have when selecting which to convert the empire to?
Caleb Evans Christianity gives huge public order boosts and allows you to build another religious building, the Hermitage. It also allows you to recruit Orthodox Priests into your army. Paganism gives boosts to settlements/units, this includes experience boosts, recruitment of bezerkers(exclusive to the Alemanni and Lombardi), missile attack boost for the Saxons, etc. They have poor public order boosts, and if the state religion differs from a city’s religion, it gets negative debuffs to public order. In my opinion, if you aren’t playing as the Western Romans, Eastern Romans, Goths, or Franks, don’t bother with Christianity, for those are the only factions that can recruit Christian Priests. With the WRE, it should be a priority to convert your cities to Christianity, since you’re going to need that public order bonus if you want to keep the empire together. As the Franks, however, even though you can recruit Christian priests by converting, your main priority as them is to handle your squalor and the Alemanni down south. I hope this helps you in your next campaign.
@@polpo8342 Thanks. I usually just convert to Paganism but I can definitely see the advantage especially for the Western part of the Empire.
I wonder if you can make all settlements pegan
yes!.
still here in 22
It's better to be pagan in all settlements as the pagan temple is better
You didn't do on rebels and spqr
I don't know a lot about the SPQR campaign, but rebels campaign I'd certainly like to do soon!
The SPQR is a really interesting faction, it's like your standard Roman faction but with some very odd quirks (since they're supposed to be unplayable, and are ironically more broken than the Rebels)
-- They, like Rebels, cannot have their settlements revolt. I assume this is so that the SPQR can't lose Rome before the civil war starts
-- The SPQR can't build any temples. While you don't really need happiness or public order, it does kind of suck that you can't build temples to gain population growth or military bonuses
-- Trying to click the "Senate" tab in the factions menu crashes the game :P
-- For some reason, if the player takes control of the SPQR, the Italian peninsula enters "Battle Royale" mode. Every game I've played, after even just a handful of turns, the civil war will suddenly trigger incredibly early, most often by a Roman faction attempting to attack you. I don't know why this happens, and this is obviously impossible when playing as other Romans
-- You have easily the best starting army in the entire game, and when Battle Royale mode inevitably breaks out, you will already have experience 3 Principes and Triarii while the other Romans will still be using Hastati.
My strategy is usually this:
1) Secure Sardinia and then move to Sicily. You have an incredibly strong starting army, the Carthagineans will absolutely be no match. You will also want these areas for when the civil war fires; just in case Rome should fall, you'll still be alive and relatively safe
2) From Sicily and Rome, push straight to the Scipii and wipe them out early as soon as the civil war starts. They're not the strongest, so it's best to get them out of the way as soon as possible
3) Position some troops on the defense at the bridge on the Tiber river near Rome to hold off the Julii while you send the rest of your armies to remove the Brutii from Southern Italy. The vast majority of their army will be in Greece, so they will be very easy to push out. There is a good chance they will still be alive in Greece though, but the AI almost never launches naval invasions, so you'll be safe.
4) After surviving the Julii assaults, launch a counter attack. They probably will not expand into Gaul while they're at war with you, so they'll be small.
5) You should now have dominance of the Italian peninsula, and you can basically play like a normal Roman faction. Be sure to never destroy any religious buildings you come across, since you can't build your own
@@BetaDude40 I think it triggers because you have Rome, I am pretty sure having Rome triggers civil war.
No offence but I don’t like the first 24 minutes explaining the troops but I did find the campaign advice useful
could just skip it ngl
Anyone knows the faction id for rome barbarian?
Can you do factions guide for Alexander?
I don't have much experience with Alexander but if I do i'll make guides for it :)
Guys any of you know what cheap gaming PC I need to play Rome 2 or Attila wh 3 ?
No Vangarian Guard... bummer.
Five centuries too early bro.
I can't believe it, this game is very inaccurate, dromedaries reach speeds of 65km/h and horses of 77km/h
It should be 4 point of charge for Dromedary and 5 points for horsemen/equites.
What is the name of the game
Rome: Total War - Barbarian Invasion Expansion
Horrible faction guide